Senior Technical Director Frank Rosario, AIA, LEED Green Associate, was recognized with a 2020 AIA St. Louis Merit Award in the Drawing category for his 2015 hand sketch “Down by the Gravois – the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales”.
The hand-drawn pencil sketch is a vignette of the church of St. Francis de Sales – an icon of American ecclesiastical architecture’s preeminence in the immigrant aspirational experience of late-nineteenth century St Louis. Regarding the sketch, Frank remarked, “architectural pencil-sketching is a personal journey of mindfulness: appreciating the Whole, while reveling in the Parts; drawing what is Seen, not what is Known. A deft hand cements a memory through an investment of time and thought in a manner that a photograph may not. This drawing of the Oratory of St Francis de Sales recounts on paper a morning spent making sense of the magnificent and the mundane. Shadow, Texture, Presence; things rendered minutely and things merely suggested. This is why I draw. This is why we all should.”
